Blogging can be an excellent tool for students and instructors who want to participate in reflective learning. Students can write and reflect on what they are doing in class and get feedback from their peers and others. Teachers can write and reflect on what is happening in their classrooms and get suggestions and support from other teachers and educators. Blogs can also be used by students and instructors to learn. Students can go to blogs and gain information on any subject that either interests them or that they need for a class. Teachers can go to a blog and find information from other teachers that they can use in their own classroom with their own students. This wiki page is devoted to helping instructors to use blogging with their students.
Image from UTC Library, Library2010_077
Blogging with your Students
Blogging has numerous benefits for student learning and engagement including the following:
• Fosters reflection and deeper thinking in comparison to face-to-face discussions because students have more time to think about their responses
• Gets quiet students to participate
• Lets students think without pressure
• Keeps discussions fresh and authentic
• Enables students to construct short, informal writing pieces
• Enables students to provide responses to course readings that may be inadequately addressed in class
• Can be used or small group projects and/or collaborative authoring
• Can be used for student reflective journaling
• Enables students to include multimedia and links to connected sources
General Tips and Suggestions for Implementing Blogging for Reflection:
1. Discuss the purpose.
2. Focus your critiques on improvement.
3. Ask students to learn and share something new.
4. Determine whether or not to make commenting required or optional.
5. Set aside class time for reflection
6. Emphasize digital citizenship and online safety.
For more information on each tip, see science teacher Hayley Hutchinson's blog post!
Provide Students with Focus Questions/Stem Starters for Reflection:
1. “What did you think before you studied these ideas?”
2. “How could you find out more?”
3. “What might you have done to improve your learning?”
4. "What problems did you encounter while you were working on the assignment/project? How did you solve them?"
5. "What resources did you use while working on the assignment/project? Which ones were especially helpful? Which ones would you use again"
6. "What were your goals for this assignment/project? Did your goals change as you worked on it? Did you meet your goals?"
7. "Have you changed any ideas you used to have on this subject? Why or why not?"
8. "In what ways did your work meet the standards for this assignment/project?"
9. "In what ways did it not meet those standards?"
10. "One thing I would like to improve upon is..."
11. "What would you change if you had a chance to do this assignment/project over again?"
12. "What will you change in the next revision of this assignment/project?"
Examples of Reflective Learning Blogs
To view examples of student blogs, please see Edublogger's Class Blog List. You can view examples at different grade levels and for different subject areas. Some of the blogs on this list include only posts by the teacher. To view blogs with student posts, be sure to look for a "yes" in the "student blogs" column of the spreadsheet.
Below, we have included more detailed descriptions and links to a few blogs that we found to be particularly well done/helpful.
Elementary School
Elementary teacher Mr. Shwartz has shared two of his student's blogs. It is interesting to read his explanation of how he kept his young students safe while at the same time posting their blogs. Kidslikeblogs.org
Middle School
Huzzah! is a blog where sixth and seventh grade students from British Columbia, Canada actively blog about what they're learning in class throughout the year, current events, and their interests. Their teacher also includes detailed guidelines, developed with students, for commenting and blogging.
High School
Gary Abud, a physics and chemistry teacher, uses reflective blogging to have his students synthesize what they learned while completing various in-class activities, including lab experiments. Each week, students construct a blog post to reflect on what they learned during the week. He comments that the blog posts can “later serve as a study resource for students or a digital portfolio of learning throughout the year." He also includes reflective question starters to help students focus their posts. To see examples of his students’ blogs, click here; be sure to scroll to the bottom of his page to see the examples!
Harlan-Haughey, S., Cunningham, T., Lees, K., & Estrup, A. (2016). Blogging to Develop honors students' writing. Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, 17(1), 271-287.Retrieved from Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database.
Blogging can be an excellent tool for students and instructors who want to participate in reflective learning. Students can write and reflect on what they are doing in class and get feedback from their peers and others. Teachers can write and reflect on what is happening in their classrooms and get suggestions and support from other teachers and educators. Blogs can also be used by students and instructors to learn. Students can go to blogs and gain information on any subject that either interests them or that they need for a class. Teachers can go to a blog and find information from other teachers that they can use in their own classroom with their own students. This wiki page is devoted to helping instructors to use blogging with their students.
Blogging with your Students
Blogging has numerous benefits for student learning and engagement including the following:• Fosters reflection and deeper thinking in comparison to face-to-face discussions because students have more time to think about their responses
• Gets quiet students to participate
• Lets students think without pressure
• Keeps discussions fresh and authentic
• Enables students to construct short, informal writing pieces
• Enables students to provide responses to course readings that may be inadequately addressed in class
• Can be used or small group projects and/or collaborative authoring
• Can be used for student reflective journaling
• Enables students to include multimedia and links to connected sources
General Tips and Suggestions for Implementing Blogging for Reflection:
1. Discuss the purpose.
2. Focus your critiques on improvement.
3. Ask students to learn and share something new.
4. Determine whether or not to make commenting required or optional.
5. Set aside class time for reflection
6. Emphasize digital citizenship and online safety.
For more information on each tip, see science teacher Hayley Hutchinson's blog post!
Provide Students with Focus Questions/Stem Starters for Reflection:
1. “What did you think before you studied these ideas?”
2. “How could you find out more?”
3. “What might you have done to improve your learning?”
4. "What problems did you encounter while you were working on the assignment/project? How did you solve them?"
5. "What resources did you use while working on the assignment/project? Which ones were especially helpful? Which ones would you use again"
6. "What were your goals for this assignment/project? Did your goals change as you worked on it? Did you meet your goals?"
7. "Have you changed any ideas you used to have on this subject? Why or why not?"
8. "In what ways did your work meet the standards for this assignment/project?"
9. "In what ways did it not meet those standards?"
10. "One thing I would like to improve upon is..."
11. "What would you change if you had a chance to do this assignment/project over again?"
12. "What will you change in the next revision of this assignment/project?"
Examples of Reflective Learning Blogs
To view examples of student blogs, please see Edublogger's Class Blog List. You can view examples at different grade levels and for different subject areas. Some of the blogs on this list include only posts by the teacher. To view blogs with student posts, be sure to look for a "yes" in the "student blogs" column of the spreadsheet.
Below, we have included more detailed descriptions and links to a few blogs that we found to be particularly well done/helpful.
Elementary School
Elementary teacher Mr. Shwartz has shared two of his student's blogs. It is interesting to read his explanation of how he kept his young students safe while at the same time posting their blogs. Kidslikeblogs.orgMiddle School
Huzzah! is a blog where sixth and seventh grade students from British Columbia, Canada actively blog about what they're learning in class throughout the year, current events, and their interests. Their teacher also includes detailed guidelines, developed with students, for commenting and blogging.
High School
Gary Abud, a physics and chemistry teacher, uses reflective blogging to have his students synthesize what they learned while completing various in-class activities, including lab experiments. Each week, students construct a blog post to reflect on what they learned during the week. He comments that the blog posts can “later serve as a study resource for students or a digital portfolio of learning throughout the year." He also includes reflective question starters to help students focus their posts. To see examples of his students’ blogs, click here; be sure to scroll to the bottom of his page to see the examples!
Assessing Blog Posts
Use this link to find another page with assessment help on blogs.
References
Abud, G., Jr. (2012, September 20). Student blogs for reflective writing [Blog
post]. Retrieved from http://abud.me/reflective-learning-blogs/
Hall, M. (2013, November 27). Using blogging as a learning tool [Blog post]. Retrieved from The innovative instructor blog: http://ii.library.jhu.edu/2013/11/27/usingblogging-as-a-learningtool/
Harlan-Haughey, S., Cunningham, T., Lees, K., & Estrup, A. (2016). Blogging to Develop honors students' writing. Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, 17(1), 271-287.Retrieved from Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database.
Hutchinson, H. (2015, July 21). Use blogging for reflection and assessment [Blog post]. Retrieved from In the Classroom website: https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=494
21st Century Learning Academy: A School at the Whitfield Career Academy. (2011). The 40 reflection questions. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from Edutopia website: https://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-stw-replicatingPBL-21stCAcad-reflection-questions.pdf
Waters, S. (2017, April). The current state of educational blogging. Retrieved from Edublogs website: https://www.theedublogger.com/2017/04/11/educational blogging-2016/